Society of Research Administrators International Keynote Address

Introduction

Thank you for the introduction.

Good morning everyone.

Today we are proving that there is such thing as a 7:30 on a Monday morning. Astounding!

If this were a lecture at the University of Waterloo my students would be drinking about twice as much coffee as you all are right now.

It is so wonderful to be here in beautiful Montreal.

I would like to thank your president, Jim Hanlon, for the invitation to speak with you this morning.

I’m here today to speak to you about values.

The value of research. The value of leadership.

The value of research administrators.

And how those values, taken together, can propel your organization to new heights of innovation, interdisciplinarity, and international success.

The Context

The Society of Research Administrators International’s membership is diverse.

Post-secondary institutions, hospitals and medical centres, government agencies at all levels, research foundations and institutes, and a wide array of R&D-performing business leaders.

However, there is one thing that we share across the board – none of us are immune to the challenges facing the world today.

We have almost run out of metaphors to describe the current economic climate since 2008.

We are also in a new era of increased public accountability and transparency.

And internationally we are seeing increasingly complex problems across a range of issues – aging, environment, population growth, hunger, energy, literacy, democracy, human rights, and water.

The new economies that are seen as a threat to the entrenched model of Western dominance are the same ones that are threatening to upend the traditional balance of higher education, by which I mean American, British, and European ascendancy.

China, India, Brazil, Singapore.

International competition for the best faculty, research talent, and students has accelerated just as competition for resources and markets has.

By some counts emerging market economies now account for almost three quarters of global growth, an increase from about one-third at the start of the last decade.[1]

And these emerging economies are being fueled by an increased investment in science and technology, research and development.

Today, the means of production, and the tools for innovation – In other words, knowledge – is in an ever-increasing number of hands.

We are seeing developing countries enjoying successful science and technology initiatives, where traditional limitations can now be overcome through the accumulation and global trade of a wide variety of skills, goods, and most importantly, knowledge.

50 years ago, you could count the major global players in science and technology with the fingers on one hand.

Today, there are now many players in an increasingly global science and technology arena, and more players are expected to soon crowd the field.

The pace of change is accelerating.

This is due to the explosive growth and accessibility of information, the increasing number of highly skilled scientists and engineers engaged in research and development, and the increasing number of countries capable of contributing to leading edge Research and Development.

Centres for technological research and innovation are now globally dispersed.

An unprecedented number of entities from all four corners of the globe are now competing for resources.

Competing for markets.

Competing for talent.

The global competition for high tech, for science and technology, is heating up.

This competition will be about two things: First resources, including knowledge, and second, talent.

What does this mean for those countries that once had a comfortable leadership advantage? And what does it mean for the new economies that are in the ascent?

It means that anyone who fails to exploit new technologies or that loses the capability for proprietary use of their own new technologies will find their existing industries rendered uncompetitive, or worse, obsolete.

When we think about our countries’ future strategies for science and technology development, we have to keep this in mind.

The Value of Research

So in this environment, what is the value of research?

The phrase “knowledge economy” has been widely used in recent years to describe how societies can be built around the effective use of knowledge.

There is a worldwide aspiration to link culture, the environment, health, technology, and innovation, and use those links to advance both society and the economy for the benefit of all.

A knowledge economy is one that views knowledge as a resource, valued not only for its own sake, but also as the key ingredient in social and economic productivity.

What role do research organizations play in the knowledge economy?

We supply knowledge-creating, talented human capital to the regions in which our institutions reside, and, more importantly, to the global economy. That’s our value-add.

Again, knowledge, and talent. The two new currencies of the globalized information age. The knowledge economy.

The Value of Leadership

At the end of the day, the buck stops with individuals.

How those individuals are enabled and encouraged matters.

I will give you three examples:

Carleton University

  • Had to be done at the level of the individual.

TRIUMF

  • I’m going to put your president Jim Hanlon on the spot for a few moments and talk about how high-level exemplary leadership enabled an organization to reach even greater heights.

The University of Waterloo

In 2003, the University of Waterloo’s research income was $99.6 million dollars. In 2011, it was $190.4 million dollars.

Even as the tech bubble burst and we ran into significant rougher economic waters along with everyone else in 2008, the University of Waterloo managed to increase its research revenue year over year.

How did we manage this? Six foundational pillars for success:

  • Academic excellence;
  • Research excellence and impact;
  • Co-operative education;
  • Internationalization
  • Graduate studies; and
  • Entrepreneurship

Sixth Decade Plan – mid-cycle review – wide consultation with a view to synthesizing stakeholder contributions into an accountability and action plan.

The University of Waterloo closely integrates research and learning in the classroom.

Requires buy-in from every level, from departments on up.

The nuts and bolts are there, but somebody has to put it together.

The Value of Administrators

So what does it mean to be in an environment that provides both vision and leadership that is supported by strong administration?

I’ll give you a personal example.

Eleven years ago I accepted the position of Vice-President Research and International at Carleton University in Ottawa.

There I learned the importance of a strategic focus for a university’s research efforts.

Increasing research intensities that played to the institution’s existing strengths was an effective method of building the institution, of funding new infrastructure, which led to the hiring of new, high quality faculty members.

Six years later I took on the role of Provost and Vice President Academic at Carleton.

I was able to widen my thinking and appreciate how students are integrated into the overall picture.

The importance of the student experience.

Students’ role in driving the institution as key stakeholders.

And then there was the opportunity to move to a similar position at the University of Waterloo in 2009 as Vice President Academic and Provost.

The University of Waterloo represents a successful integration of student focus and research excellence.

Taken together, as president you have a broader sense of the university’s place in the world.

As a place where the leaders of tomorrow get started.

As an innovation engine for our country and the world.

As a place of collaboration and connection that has forged links with the community, with industry, with all levels of government, and with other countries.

The Value of “I”

I will now speak about the value of “I”. Not the value of “me,” but an equation I like to use called I-Cubed.

There are three I’s involved. The first is innovation.

Innovation is the collective responsibility of all sectors, but I believe universities and other research institutions play a special, a critical role in advancing it, simply because we are engaged in a two-way exchange of those essential ingredients I mentioned earlier:

Knowledge and talent.

One of the classical definitions of innovation is “a process through which economic or social values are extracted from knowledge.”

It is the natural response of a research organization to the complex challenges of a changing world.

What we must understand is that innovation is about three things: location, location, location, but not in terms of real estate.

Real innovation is about finding points of chaos, of collision, of crisis, and working to solve problems that flow from them.

It could be demographics and the health and policy issues of an aging population, it could be the limitations of Moore’s Law on technological development, or it could be securing safe, clean water and sustainable energy for future generations.

To me, innovation is as much a sense of place, a position, as it is a process or activity.

After all, in today’s wired and interconnected world, the next great big idea could come from anywhere.

Innovation is your organization’s address.

Your plan is your road map.

Your leaders help the organization find its way to that address.

Interdisciplinarity is the second “I” component.

Since our founding in 1957, the University of Waterloo has sought to create an environment that combines the best in science, technology, and the humanities in a way that stays relevant to the lives of Canadians in a rapidly changing world.

You cannot accomplish this task if every faculty and department stays in its own backyard, filling its own silo. Collaboration begins internally.

Combining what’s best from diverse disciplines has been the hallmark of the University of Waterloo’s success.

Our Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change, or IC3, involves researchers from four faculties.

Our Michael and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, opening next year, will foster cross-disciplinary collaboration between the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology.

And the Canadian Water Network, hosted at the University of Waterloo, counts researchers from all six UW faculties among its members.

Collaboration is a key aspect of this interdisciplinary activity, and it is one that has resonance for research organizations.

Sociologists Fred Block and Matthew Keller conducted a review of award-winning innovations in the United States between 1971 and 2006 and concluded that groundbreaking innovations have increasingly resulted from partnerships among government, business and academia, rather than from companies acting on their own.

In 1971, 86 per cent of the top innovations were developed privately, but by 2006, that number had fallen to 31 per cent.[i]

Clearly, collaboration counts.

Just think of the possibilities of forging linkages between the various constituent groups in the SRA. What could we accomplish together?

Internationalization is the final “I” in the equation.

We must be known beyond our own borders.

Competition and collaboration are two sides of the same coin. I’ll give you an example.

The Nanyang Technological University of Singapore is one of the only other universities in the world with a similar strength in quantum research as the University of Waterloo.

The University of Waterloo ranked 48th in the Times Higher Education Top 50 Engineering and Technology Faculty rankings, just ahead of Nanyang, which came in 50th.

However, Nanyang is aggressively attempting to increase its PhD numbers.

While we are competing with them internationally for physicists, we are also sending Waterloo postdocs over to Singapore as part of a global exchange.

And I will be visiting Singapore in November to seek further opportunities for collaboration.

So we seek collaborative opportunities with our competitors to make us stronger and to solve complex problems more rapidly. Competition can be fierce without it alienating either party.

Conclusion – The Value of Value

Our objective is clear – we want to make an impact and to create talent and knowledge in ways that benefit the future of our economy, our community, our country, and the world.

Administration is only the means to an end.

The most important thing is what our organizations contribute to society.

  • Quality of Life;
  • The economy;
  • Social contributions

A truly valuable research organization is one that is making an impact outside of the boundaries of its campus.

It’s one that is solving the problems that matter to our community and our country, and the world.

It’s an institution that is living up to its promise and purpose as a powerhouse of intellectual enquiry, and a key requirement for the social, economic, and technological development of our society.

And it’s an institution that has built the strongest pipeline from the laboratory and the lecture hall to the marketplace.

Thank you.



[1] John Ivison “Trade Winds Batter Tories.” The National Post, May 17, 2011



[i] Fred Block and Matthew R. Keller “Where Do Innovations Come From? Transformations in the U.S. National Innovation System, 1970-2006,” The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, July 2008, page 10